


The Boy and the Beech Tree

by Elivra



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Depression, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Suicide Attempt, Underage Drinking, it ends well i promise, nature spirits, please don't let these tags scare you off
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 04:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16234508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elivra/pseuds/Elivra
Summary: A lonely little boy sees spirits in his garden. A lonely beech tree becomes his best friend.Rated for swearing, suicide-related content. Inspired by a tweetstory by @Microsff on tumblr/twitter





	The Boy and the Beech Tree

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, this is totally inspired by a "tweetstory" by [MicroSFF](http://microsff.tumblr.com/), reblogged in [this post](http://lostcauses-noregrets.tumblr.com/post/178678505370/tweetstory) by [Lostcauses](http://lostcauses-noregrets.tumblr.com/) on tumblr. 
> 
> I began writing this as a personal experiment, somehow ended up finishing it. It is longer than expected, darker than expected, with more commas than expected. Consider yourself warned. :)
> 
> Happy reading!
> 
> **TW: As mentioned in my tags and the summary, suicide-related content ahead.**

He first sees one when he is barely five years old. He sees the small, twiggy limbs, the splayed leaf-hands in one of his mother's hanging pots, and he runs up to her and exclaims, “Mamma, there's a _person_ in the flowerpot!” 

He does not let it go, insists on dragging her all the way to the back porch, where he points at the pot with his eyes trained on the plant spilling out of it, trying his very best to discern humanoid limbs from the mass of stems and leaves.

His mother, however, only has eyes for him. She smiles, places a thin hand on his sleek little head, and sits him down on her lap.

“I think you saw a nature spirit, darling.”

“Wha’s that?”

“If a place or object is loved enough, a spirit is born and is bound to it.”

He frowns, looking between the plant and his mother. Her smile widens. “It means the plant feels very loved, my sweet. Good job,” she adds, ruffling his hair.

He giggles and swats her hand away. So that's all it takes? Just _love_? He decides to love each and every plant in their little garden until they all have spirits of their own. Easy-peasy.

He falls asleep in his mother's lap as dusk advances, so he misses the little hand waving at him from the flowerpot when his mother carries him inside.

*

* * *

 

There is a beech tree right on the edge of their backyard and he _adores_ it. He quickly learns to clamber up its smooth trunk, finds the choicest branches to snuggle in. His mother warns him not to climb too high; he nods but doesn't really pay attention. It's _his_ tree, he'll be perfectly fine.

Which is why when he falls down and breaks his arm, it feels like a betrayal.

“I _loved_ you!” He sobs angrily, before his mother comes running out and carries him back inside.

“Shall I get a treehouse put up there, darling?” His mother asks him later, a crease of worry between her delicate brows. He looks out of his attic bedroom window, where he can see the tree standing on the edge of their yard, tall and alone. He sees the branches sloping down as if in sadness, sees the leaves rustling in a gentle breeze. He can almost hear the wind whispering through them: it sounds apologetic.

He imagines hard iron nails and heavy, dead wooden boards on those graceful branches. “No,” he shakes his head. “Don't hurt the spirit.”

His mother's frown deepens. “Sweetheart-”

“Please don't!” He cries, turning plaintive eyes onto her. “ _Please_!”

She sighs and gives in. “Alright.”

*

* * *

 

He starts regular school and doesn't talk about spirits anymore. He has more important things to worry about -homework, and sports, and the mean kids who somehow find something or the other about him to make fun of, from his eyebrows to his worn shoes.

He doesn't talk about the bullies either, but his mother finds out anyway because of the bruises. She insists on intervening at school, and, as expected, the bullying gets worse. He starts to fight back, starts to talk less.

But he hasn't forgotten his beech tree. He still climbs up into its foliage to sit and do his homework. He still talks to it, to the other plants in the garden, when he thinks his mother isn't looking. He climbs higher and higher each month, far higher than he had ever been when he fell down and broke his arm. This time, he _knows_ he won't fall, because he knows better.

And so, he is certain, does the tree.

*

* * *

 

Time passes and he is almost unrecognisable from the precocious little toddler his mother knew. He barely speaks to anyone outside of school; he is either cooped up in his room with his books and games, or out in the garden, perched out of sight in the growing cover of his beech tree.

The last time he ever speaks of nature spirits is after a school trip to the local conservatory. When asked about it, he simply shrugs and says, “The orchids were sassy.”

His mother stares at him for a long moment before giving him a small, rare smile. And, miracle of miracles, he gives her a rarer smile back.

“What tea is that?” He asks her.

She looks down at her teacup in surprise at the unexpected question. “Chamomile,” she tells him, throwing him a questioning glance as she tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear.

“Your favourite,” he nods and makes his way to the backyard. The conversation is over, but both he and his mother remember it again _much_ later.

His mother realises that she never told him about her favourite tea.

He realises his mother's wrist was thinner than he had ever seen it.

Both realisations come far too late.

*

* * *

 

 “I saw a tea spirit in Mum's teacup today,” he sighs, leaning back against the tree trunk, flipping aimlessly through his history notes. The leaves directly above his head rustle, as if with excitement.

“Yeah, I know!” He stuffs his book back in the bag hanging next to him. “What happens to her when Mum drinks it up?”

The sound of the leaves turns into a whisper, low and soothing. “She -she won't die or anything, right?” He asks uncertainly.

A small twig with shiny baby leaves brushes his arm gently. He leans back onto the trunk with another sigh, this time of relief. “Yeah, alright. If you say so.” He is quiet for a while after that, watching the ever-changing kaleidoscope of green and yellow shadows on his white shorts.

“Why won't you show yourself to me?” He murmurs suddenly. A sudden gust of wind swirls around him, and a ring of leaves shudders around him -loud, insistent.

 _I'm already here_.

He smiles lightly and shakes his head. “I meant to speak, for real.” He glances behind him where he can see glimpses of his back porch. “I see _people_ sometimes.”

He thinks of the little creature in the hanging pot. He thinks of the small creek in the woods beyond his yard, of pale arms and scaly fins and silvery hair he imagines he sees in it. At least, he _thinks_ he imagines it.

“I met some orchids today,” he says instead, shaking himself out of his stupor. “They were so chatty!” He crosses his arms behind his head. “They were showing off like they were little dolls or something. You'd have hated them. There was a red one called Samantha that was _super_ annoying-”

He stops speaking so abruptly an inquiring quiver runs along the leaves surrounding him. He ignores it and places a palm softly on the trunk behind him and looks up. The tree has grown much faster than him over the years, and though he climbs higher now than he used to, he can barely see the top of the tree.

“What's your name?” He whispers, and the tree stills around him.

When silence is all he gets, he asks, “Do you even have a name?”

A longer pause follows, and he lets his hand drop. “Shall I… shall I give you one? Will you speak to me if I do that?”

The air around him seems to shift -the stillness is now something like a held breath, anticipation tingling on his skin.

“Okay, then!” He grins suddenly, and rummages in his bag for his history notes. “Let's see. Are you Elizabeth?”

Nothing.

“John?”

Still nothing.

“Henry? Catherine? James? Anne?”

The beech tree still doesn't say a word to him, but he knows he hasn't found the name yet.

*

* * *

 

 It becomes their own little game. At random times, in random quiet moments, he throws out a name or two, and is shot down every time.

“Zelda. Minerva. Boris. Maria. Christopher. Marcus.”

The leaves rustle out an exasperated sigh.

“Oh, come on, I'm trying!” He grumbles, twirling his pencil between his fingers. Suddenly, he focuses on the poem from his English textbook, and smirks.

“Colonel Fazackerly Butterworth-toast.”

The silence of the tree is pointed, almost insulting. If it had eyes, they'd be rolling.

“Hey, no need to be such a beech about it,” he quips, his smirk widening.

He almost imagines that the sturdy bark behind him is thrumming along with his chuckles. At least, he _thinks_ he imagines it.

*

* * *

 

On his thirteenth birthday, his mother collapses in the kitchen. The image is forever burnt into his head -his mother, looking almost lifeless on the old tiled floor, her hair spilled into a halo behind her head, oven mitts on her hands, surrounded by the debris of his birthday cake.

He spends the day in the hospital, grim and stoic and trying not to show how lost he feels amidst all the adults. A sympathetic nurse drops him home late that night, and he lies that he can get a neighbour to come stay with him. He doesn't know any of his closest neighbours: the people in the prim little houses who live a respectable distance from the woods, unlike him.

He knows he shouldn't have lied. He needs to find an adult to help with his mother's hospitalisation. He needs to go through whatever paperwork his mother has and get anything and everything that looks helpful to hospital administration. He needs to inform his school that he can't make it for a while. He needs to eat.

But he locks the front door when the nurse leaves, and makes his way to the back porch immediately. Summer is long gone, and there is a cold bite to the night air. Yet, he doesn't care, it doesn't matter, nothing matters, and he needs to do so many things, so many grownup things, but first and foremost he needs to _sleep_.

He goes to his beech tree, where he burrows wordlessly into a hollow at the base of the trunk. The wood creaks around him, the branches bend down in a sudden gust of cold wind -but for the first time since that crash in the kitchen in the morning, he feels _relief_. The mesh of bare branches somehow keeps the worst of the cold out, the tree whispers a dry, crackling lullaby around him, and he cries himself to sleep.

*

* * *

 

His mother wakes up before he can call anyone for help. Between the two of them, they manage to bring some semblance of order into their lives. He gets a crash course in handling financial affairs, about things like insurance claims, loans and mortgages, and tax forms -things he never knew even _existed_ before.

She is discharged from the hospital in three days, which still blows an incredible chunk out of their savings. Her diagnosis is tossed aside in the middle of this mess -neither of them address the grim news that the doctors had given them.

“We'll cross that bridge when we come to it,” is her last word on the matter, and he doesn't push it.

But eventually, he tells the beech tree.

“She's dying,” he whispers one night sitting high up in the branches, surrounded by the glimmer of new leaves in the moonlight.

A small branch nudges his shoulder gently, and he lets out a heavy sigh, running his fingers delicately on the smooth bark. “I feel,” he starts, then has to stop speaking because a familiar lump is growing in his throat. When he judges himself capable of speaking past it, he mutters, “I feel like… like I'm in this storm and I have nothing to hold onto.”

Wood creaks and shifts around him, until he finds himself nestled more deeply in the branches, perfectly balanced, perfectly safe.

“Well, except you,” he concedes with a reluctant smile. A leaf tickles his chin.

The lump is back in his throat. He clears it hurriedly, and, in an effort to lift the mood, he tries, “Griselda?”

That earns him a sharp poke in the back.

*

* * *

 

 His life is now a new normal, but he takes it in his stride. He goes on medicine runs, he accompanies his mother on monthly hospital visits, and when she can't make it, he covers his mother's shift at the store in the nearest small town. The manager at the store says nothing of it, and simply gives them the same pay his mother used to receive. It could've been worse. There could’ve been no job to go to, no salary to take back home.

School progresses, and though he enjoys some lessons, he wants to just quit. His mother grows so upset when he suggests it to her, he doesn't dare bring it up again. So he labours on, studies a little, talks a little, keeps his head down as much as he can, which isn't a lot when it comes to him. By some perverse luck, his bruises are easier to hide from his mother now, so she remains blissfully unaware of his shenanigans at school.

At this point, the beech tree knows him better than any other living creature.

So one spring Saturday morning, he walks right past his mother’s door and goes straight to the tree, his nerves on edge.

“I kissed a girl yesterday,” he admits when he can bring himself to say it. The tree stills curiously.

“Okay, so _she_ kissed me. Some stupid dare or something,” he mumbles, weaving blades of grass between his restless fingers. He can tell the tree is still waiting for him to continue.

“Whatever. I don't think she liked it. Mortimer?”

The name is ignored.

He frowns at the little square of woven grass in his hands. “I don't think I liked it, either.”

The wet air around him takes on a comforting hum, and he finally feels himself relax.

*

* * *

 

 On a bright day in the summer after his fifteenth birthday, his mother just doesn't wake up. He waits for her to wake for a whole day, just huddled in a corner of her bedroom. When she hasn't moved even until the next morning, he rummages in her bedside dresser and finds a phone number.

Things move quickly after that. He finds a new relative, finds his mother's simple will, finds a few old photographs of her where she looks almost unrecognisably hearty. He wonders if his father is in one of the photos -but he looks too much like his mother, and can't see any resemblance with the few men in the pictures.

The day of the funeral is upon him before he knows it. He tries to have no flowers at the ceremony, but everyone listens to his Uncle because he is the adult, and scaring people to get his way seems to be his MO.

There are soggy finger sandwiches waiting for the attendees in his stripped home. There are few people anyway -the store manager, the kind nurse from the hospital, some old friends of hers in tacky dresses, a parent or two from the association at school.

“She was so young, so full of life,” one of the parents tells him solemnly. He remembers his mother's drawn, unmoving face in the end and nearly retches. Without another word, he turns and leaves the room, grabs a book blindly from the open box filled with her belongings and runs to his tree.

The tree is _beautiful_ today. The bright sunlight is bringing each fresh leaf into vivid focus, when it is not filtering down through them to form fantastical stained glass patterns of green and gold all over his skin.  He hasn't paid particular attention because he sees the tree everyday, but now he notices how much it really has grown. Several large branches curve down, almost touching the ground. Its foliage is thick and a fresh, shimmering green, and when he slips in between the branches to find his favourite spot somewhere halfway up the tree, he is sure he is completely hidden from the house.

Only then does he try to calm his racing heart. The breeze is mellow, just enough to make sure he doesn't sweat through his stuffy formal clothes. The leaves are all murmuring, whispering, quiet, gentle. Something like a song, but not quite a song, really. Somewhere between a lullaby and a prayer.

His hands are shaking when he opens the book, but his voice is flat, emotionless. He doesn't think that will ever change now.

“So I was thinking there are more names I haven't tried yet,” he mutters, flipping through the pages. The tips of the new branches are scratching his arms and his neck, but he brushes them away impatiently.

“Constance? No.” He keeps his eyes trained on the book. “Heinrich. Joseph. Josephine. Stella. Cole.”

The leaves bristle louder and he ignores them.

“Florian? Bette? Ernest? Stop it,” he snaps when a leaf brushes his neck insistently. “Tell me what your name is. Ludovic? Patience? Carlos. Sadie. _Stop it!_ ” His voice rises to a sudden shout, his eyes burning, and it feels like something has broken loose in his chest.

“Why don’t you speak to me? Why don’t you show yourself? Tell me your name!” He is practically screaming now. Fury is simmering in his very veins and, tossing the book away, he clenches his fists and punches the smooth trunk of the tree. “Tell! Me! Your! Name! _Tell me_!” He is punctuating each word with a blow, so blinded by rage he doesn’t feel the branches shifting, the leaves trembling with alarm...

The world disappears beneath his feet and he tumbles down, landing onto the ground in an unceremonious heap. But his fall has been slowed by intervening branches, so he is winded more than anything else, staring at the tree before him in open-mouthed shock.

And then he crumples. The anger fizzles away like it was never there.

“I’m leaving.”

The tree goes utterly still. Silent.

“I have to stay with my uncle now. He lives in the city.” His voice is hollow. As if on cue, a gruff voice calls from the house, “Oi, brat! Time to go!”

He ignores it and crawls closer to the trunk, and places both his palms gently on it. “Speak to me,” he whispers. _“Please_. Before I-” His voice catches in his throat and he can’t say another word.

His uncle is shouting from the house again, but he hears nothing but the sudden, low groan that spreads through the trunk, a sound he has never heard before. His eyes begin to prick.

“ _Oi brat_!”

He snatches the soiled book from where it had landed on the ground before and skims through it desperately. “Frederick. Eva?”

“BOY!”

“Baldur. Helene-” He is babbling.

“For the last _goddamn_ time-”

“Erwin.”

The tree _shudders_.

His jaw drops. His uncle’s shouts are getting louder but he doesn't care, he _doesn't care_ because the tree -his beech tree is _trembling_.

“Erwin?” He repeats softly, and there is no mistaking the current that seems to shoot up the tree's trunk, like it's in an earthquake. Except the world is still, the earth unmoving, and _his_ tree - _Erwin_ is practically shaking.

He feels breathless, and yet he whispers again, “Erwin…” Familiarising himself to the sound of the name, the taste of it on his tongue-

A hard, cold hand grips his elbow from behind. He lashes out on reflex, but his uncle catches his fist with his other hand easily. “You deaf or what, kid? Time to go.”

“Five minutes,” he snaps, struggling, but his uncle yanks his arm hard. To his horror, he begins to be dragged away.

“No - _stop_ , I said five minutes, just five more fucking minutes!”

“Time’s up. We're leaving _now_.”

“Stop!” He bellows, but his uncle is relentless, he's _strong_ , and he's not strong enough to pull away, to stay with-

The beech tree - _Erwin_ -creaks loudly, the wood in the trunk is groaning. The sound cuts right through to his heart, he has never heard such _pain_.

“Let me go!” His cheeks are wet, and he realises he is sobbing. The groan behind him is louder, and he nearly collapses at the sound.

“Tch.” His uncle shoots him a glare. “Shoulda known my sister woulda raised a fucking pussy- livin’ out here in the woods-”

“Let me go, you _asshole_ -” He is screaming again, punching his uncle with his fists, but nothing is working, his uncle is too strong, and he's too weak.

They have reached the back porch. He throws one last desperate glance over his shoulder. The branches of Erwin the tree are waving like they are caught in a stiff gale.

“ _Erwin_!” He shouts, and the loudest moan he has heard yet issues from the tree. The back door slams shut just as he hears a loud _crack_ , like wood breaking.

And then he is dragged to his uncle's truck, already packed with stuff from the now-empty house, his ears ringing with that last, keening wail.

And then they are gone.

*

* * *

 

 He is at a party and he hates it. He watches his peers and even younger teenagers mill about the house, drunk and screaming and gyrating awkwardly to the loud music.

“Leeeee!” His friend suddenly screams in his ear, and he has to fight down the urge to punch his stupid inebriated face.

“I told you not to call me that,” he growls over the blaring music, his face fixed in an expression of mild disgust.

His friend laughs. “Whatever, man. Hey, wanna get outta here?”

He crinkles his nose when he gets a glimpse of a couple sucking face sloppily, and chugs down the rest of his beer. “ _Fuck_ yes. Let's go.”

Turns out a large group of kids are leaving, all loud, and rowdy, and drunk as hell. He doesn't mind; he needs a ride back and his only two friends are with him. They leave in a station wagon, of all things, an old rust bucket that looks like it belongs in a museum. They all pile into it somehow, and careen away from the party.

He is offered more booze in the cramped van and he takes it. He would prefer a joint, at the very least a plain damn cigarette, but he takes what he gets. He loses track of how long they're driving, where they're going.

They stop at some point on the empty highway because some of the kids want to take a piss on the side of the road. He stays in the back of the van and lets a kid he doesn't know jam his tongue down his mouth, lets him grope him over his clothes, because he's suddenly feeling too fucking numb and he's suddenly desperate to know he's _alive_.

The van starts to move again; many of the kids are now cheering and catcalling so loudly he shoves the boy away with a snarl.The teasing doesn't stop until he punches a kid straight on the face, drawing blood. There's even more cheering after that, and when he recognises the district they're passing through in the front windshield, they almost don't stop to let him leave. He gets his way by threatening more violence, tries to get his friends to leave with him, but they're enjoying themselves too much and refuse.

And so with a sigh, half of irritation and half of relief, he gets out of the van at the entrance to the small park a block away from his uncle's house.

This is the only green space he has ever seen in the city. He's sure there are bigger, cleaner parks in the more well-to-do areas of the city, but he has never been to that side of town. This one has a seedy, unkempt appearance, but it is enough for him. He stumbles past the half-dead bushes, the asymmetrical hedges, past the overgrown swathes of grass and through a mass of tumbling weeds until he finds his usual spot: a lone tree on top of a gentle slope.

He sinks to the ground as soon as he reaches the tree, his head reeling, his mouth feeling soiled from the stranger's wet kisses. He fumbles in the inner pocket of his jacket, finds the carefully rolled joint and his Zippo, and lights up.

The first few drags are deep, solemn. He holds the smoke in for a while before blowing it out -an effort to get higher faster, better, longer.

He thinks back to the first time he smoked weed, how the smell of burning herbs nearly made his stomach turn over, how he felt like he was coughing his lungs out from the acrid smoke. He has long since been used to it -now it is his escape, his haven, his warm blanket and kiss goodnight.

He leans his head back and looks up. Despite it being a moonless night, it doesn't really get dark in the city. The sky is a strange mix of orange and deep blue, and so he can see the leaves of the tree with perfect clarity.

It is a beech tree, of course.

He sighs. “I'm fucked up tonight, Erwin. Didn't wanna, but, peer pressure, ya know?”

He takes another drag, listens to the faraway sounds of sirens -an ambulance or cops, could be anything. He's not worried though. There's very few of those in this part of town.

“Kissed another dude today,” he continues. “So I think it's pretty fucking certain I'm gay.” He blows the smoke out in perfect little rings. “Not a straight bone in my body. Crooked all the way.” Something about that is funny, and he giggles softly. “Shit, that rhymes.” He looks up again. “You hear that, Erwin? You hear my awesome wordsmithing?”

He watches the motionless leaves for a long moment before turning away and muttering, “'Course not. Stubborn fucking tree. Can't say a word, can you? Even after all these years.”

A dog barks in an alley somewhere, a faint scream echoes from one of the dark buildings. And the tree stays silent, unmoving in the absence of even a breath of wind.

“Erwin,” he whispers. “Fucking _Erwin_. How the hell was I supposed to guess that?” He feels the warmth of the drug spreading through him, feels the swell in his chest as his mood lifts, his anxiety sniffing out. “I didn't even know the name existed until I read it that day. You coulda just told me.”

Another beat of silence. His fingers begin to twitch.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I'm sorry I haven't come to see you…” He meant to apologise for not visiting the park lately, but something in his chest suddenly _twists_. “I'm sorry I yelled at you. I'm sorry I hit you. I'm sorry I left. I'm sorry… sorry…”

His breath is beginning to hitch. The world is spinning around him, his throat hurts, his chest is _burning._ “Erwin, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, so sorry Erwin-” He is crying for the first time in years, and he doesn't even realise it when he clambers onto his knees and hugs the trunk of the tree.

“Erwin,” he chokes, but he already knows, even in his state, that he will not get a response. This tree is too thin, its trunk barely as wide as his thigh, its leaves brittle and dull, its topmost branch barely taller than a stop sign.

This is not Erwin. Never has been.

And yet he passes out with Erwin’s name on his lips.

*

* * *

 

 He finds out the next morning that there was a devastating accident on the highway the previous night -a station wagon, filled to the brim with partying, drunk teenagers. Six people are injured, two of them critically, including the boy he kissed last night.

Four people are dead, including the driver and his two best and only friends.

*

* * *

 

He wakes up to an empty apartment on the morning of his eighteenth birthday. It is the best thing he could hope for. He drags out the little bag waiting packed and ready under his bed. He flits around the gritty apartment, extricating his hard-earned money that he had to hide from his uncle's grubby hands. And then, he leaves, not a word of goodbye wasted on his mother's vile brother. 

He knows his uncle's been trying to sell his mother's old home, but with its old structure and proximity to the woods, it had no takers. He also knows his mother left him the house in her will, so there is nothing stopping him now from going back.

He has to catch a train, change lines at a seedy station, and then take a bus to the nearest town before hitching a ride to his childhood home. He smokes a whole pack of cigarettes by the time he reaches the town. He buys a new pack before leaving, fidgeting with nervous energy, his mind suspiciously devoid of emotions.

His heart skips a beat when he unlocks the front door. The house is _filthy_. Leaving his bag at the entrance, he begins to clean.

Dust and mould is everywhere. He sweeps and scrubs, finds to his relief that the tap in the kitchen sink still works, but the lights don't. Some windows are broken, and there is a hole in the ceiling of his old attic room. He stuffs the gaps with rags against the cold winter wind, and leaves his room for another day. He even gets into his mother's room, sweeping and dusting with bone-white knuckles. The only place he avoids completely is the backyard.

It is already dark when he finishes, a full moon already bright and shining in the starry sky. His exhaustion catches up to him suddenly, and he rummages in the kitchen shelves to find his mother's chamomile tea, pristine and unspoilt.

The nervousness has become a roar in his head at this point, and yet he brews his tea with forced calm, steeps it and pours it into a carefully cleaned teacup. When he lifts it to drink the tea, he sees that his hands are trembling.

Then the steam from the cup shifts, and he sees a small face, white smoky arms and legs…

The cup slips from his hand.

The sound of it shattering feels like a cannon blast in the empty old house, and he stumbles backwards, his heart thudding. He tries to take deep, calming breaths, but it isn't working -his hands are shaking more than ever, his head is filled with screaming and it feels like his heart is going to burst from his chest.

He waits no more, thinks no more. He slams the backdoor open and rushes into the cold winter air, jacket and boots forgotten. Then, he freezes.

The yard is unrecognisable.

All the plants in his mother's hanging pots have wilted. The little flower borders are just ditches of dirt now. The ground is hard and unforgivingly cold, and at the edge of the yard… stands the skeleton of a beech tree.

Grey, cold, bare. Leafless, lifeless.

As if in a dream, he steps forward until he can place his palm on the trunk. The wood feels brittle, cracked. The branches are long dark thorns and stakes.

“Erwin…?” He rasps, but there is nothing, not even a wisp of icy wind.

There is nothing left. _Nothing_.

He stays there for a long minute, frozen, watching, waiting. When nothing changes, he squares his shoulders and walks back into the house. Brings out the dustpan and cleans up the broken teacup. Puts away the tea back in the shelves, places his bag in his mother's bedroom.

Then he goes to the little pantry that his mother used to store odds and ends in. He finds the spool of rope she used to use as a clothesline. He straightens a few other things on the shelves and closes the pantry door carefully. He makes his way back to the empty, dead backyard, back to the empty, dead tree.

His feet, still bare, find footholds on the tree trunk without any prompting. Everything about it is muscle memory to him, and he is glad, because he really doesn't feel like thinking too much right now. He makes his way to the highest branch he ever got to -now the sturdiest one to bear his adult weight before the branches start to thin. Then, with precise movements, he ties one end of the rope firmly around the girth of the branch. He loops the other end around his own neck.

He tests the strength of the knots, the rope. He throws one last glance at his ruined back porch, and for a split second he can see himself there, perched on his mother's lap on a sunny afternoon. He runs his hands once on the smooth bark of the tree.

Then, he jumps.

*

* * *

 

 His uncle is dragging him away. He wants to say goodbye, he just found out his name, he wants to _stay_ -but his uncle has got a firm grip on him.

Erwin is moaning, _wailing_. He has to go back, he has to go back to him-

There is a sharp _crack_ , like wood breaking, so loud his ears are ringing, and his throat is on fire…

Warmth envelops him. He feels a thick band of it behind his knees, circling his back.

He opens his eyes.

The first thing he sees is the dead tree, its branches like dark chinks in the starry sky. One of them ends in a jagged crack: it is broken. Suddenly, he realises that someone is _holding_ him, and he turns his head.

Eyes bluer than the blue of a summer sky meet his.

He has never seen this man before, he's sure he hasn't, but it feels like he has known him all his life, his face new, yet familiar. His hair is the gold shimmer of new leaves on a sunny day. His face is a beautiful symmetry of planes and slopes, his jaw the firm bend of the boughs of his favourite perch, his skin the glow of sunkissed wood.

And he is _warm_ , so warm. The cold winter night air is misting around him.

Then the man smiles, and he feels his breath leave his burning lungs.

“Hello, Levi.” His voice is golden honey, and Levi's stiff fingers curl on his chest. “Erwin.”

He barely feels the cold when he is set down on the ground on his bare feet, still firm in Erwin’s grasp.

Then Erwin lifts one of his hands and touches the now loose rope around his neck. “Always impatient,” he murmurs, and his eyes are glimmering.

“Always late,” Levi counters, his voice still scratchy, his breaths still short.

Erwin leans down and presses his warm forehead onto his and Levi's shivers cut off abruptly. “Always here,” he whispers, blue eyes still locked onto his. “For you.”

Levi reaches up and cups his smooth jaw with a calloused palm. Erwin’s eyes flutter closed -even his eyelashes are a dazzling gold.

“Always running,” Levi mutters, thumb stroking his cheek. “To you.”

He leans up and presses his mouth to those petal-soft lips.

And Erwin breathes life back into him.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Yeeeah, so don't ask me about the mechanics of nature spirits (or what happened to the tea spirit) in this AU, because I don't know. You're welcome to imagine what you like! :)
> 
> "Colonel Fazackerley Butterworth-toast" is an actual poem by Charles Causley that I had in school. It is absolutely hilarious, and totally worth a read. I loved it so much I can still recite the first three stanzas without looking, more than a decade later. Google it and check it out! :)
> 
> I really wish I could describe Kuchel's backyard-garden more accurately, but neither of my thumbs, I'm sorry to say, are very green. But you can bet that it was very pretty, indeed.
> 
> This is the most AU Eruri fic I have ever written. By that, I mean that I approached this story in a very different manner than I usually do, so I'm afraid the characters may be a little OOC. I really hope that you can still see the Eruris to some extent in this setting.
> 
> So please, let me know what you think of this ~~little~~ experiment of mine, either down here as a comment or on [my Tumblr](https://elivra-fanfiction.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


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